


please help me, my best friend is gone

by kythen



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, spoilers for the game ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 09:22:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13714722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kythen/pseuds/kythen
Summary: The sun rises and Prompto knows this means that Noct is gone.





	please help me, my best friend is gone

**Author's Note:**

> Huge spoilers for the end of the game. You have been warned.

The sun rises and Prompto’s heart sinks.

After ten long years without the sun and with far too many daemons roaming the land, Prompto would have thought that he would be overjoyed to see the sun. But now, knowing what he had to give to get the sun back, what _Noct_ had to give to get the sun back, it is too much for him to bear.

The daemons they had been fighting sizzle out on the crumbling grounds of the Citadel, fading away like nightmares at the end of a long sleep, and Prompto—

Prompto falls.

He ends up on his knees, his legs straight-up refusing to carry his weight and the added weight of all his grief. Something in his knees had cracked in protest as he sunk to the floor—ten years of hard labour and fighting and running and running had done that to his legs. But he doesn’t care, can’t bring himself to care through the numbness that spreads throughout his whole body.

The sun rises and Prompto cries.

He knows from experience that he is an ugly crier, that tears and snot run freely when he cries and his skin gets blotchy and red and unattractive. He hadn’t wanted to cry when they were sending Noct off. He had barely managed to look at Noct’s worn face and retreating back when he had left them on the Citadel steps. He doesn’t care now that Gladio can see him in all his snotty and blotchy glory or that Ignis can hear him making the ugliest sounds known to humanity as he wails into the breaking dawn.

Arms wrap around him, two pairs of strong and wiry arms, two bodies pressing against him on either side, holding him tight as sobs wrack his body like the tremors they had experienced when they had first rolled into Duscae and Noct had still been there. It has been ten years since that, ten long years since they had last seen Noct and the first thing they did after seeing him was to escort him to his own death. Prompto hates himself a little for that, hates himself so much for the relief that comes flooding in with the same breath as the guilt, filling up his lungs with its vicious, viscous presence and making it hard to breathe.

He had wanted, selfishly, for someone to come save them from this cursed, godsforsaken hell of eternal night but he had never wanted Noct to be that person, the born prophesied martyr that he was. Noct, of all people, was supposed to live a long and happy life with the people who loved him after the shitty lot he had been dealt in life, what with the attempts on his life as a kid, the war he had been born into, and nothing but the knowledge that he was to pour his life into a feud that had lasted eons before him.

It isn’t _fair_ and Prompto knows this, Ignis and Gladio know this, and he doesn’t know how they can stand it, knowing that they had to send their charge and friend off to such a fate like a lamb raised for slaughter. If the guilt is already choking Prompto’s insides, Ignis and Gladio must have been eaten clean from within by the guilt roiling in them until there was nothing left but a bitter emptiness. How can they _stand_ it, with Gladio gripping Prompto so hard he thinks his back might snap and Ignis stroking Prompto’s hair with jerky, erratic movements?

The sun is warm against his cheeks, his tears already drying in the heat, and Prompto is blinded by the light, his vision swimming in tears and blurring the dawn for him. If Noct was here, he would have nudged Prompto in the ribs, teasing him for missing such an important event, for not having his camera out when he had it out for every single battle they had, regardless of how insignificant it was. He wants Noct to be here right now, his face scrunching up in awkward panic when he realises that Prompto’s tears aren’t stopping and that he is crying harder with every gasp of air he takes. He wants Noct’s arms around him now with Ignis’s and Gladio’s, forming a circle around him where Prompto could be safe with all his friends by his side, safe in the knowledge that they were still here with him.

“Prompto,” Ignis’s voice is choked, wavering with emotion that Prompto has rarely heard from him, even through the ten long years when the world had gone to hell. “Prompto, you need to breathe.”

Prompto shakes his head, his body creaking in Gladio’s embrace. He is breathing, he is fine. It is _Noct_ that—

Gladio’s grip on Prompto loosens and he takes Prompto’s face in his hands, his hands solid and warm, the calluses rough against his skin. Even with Gladio right in front of him, Prompto can’t see his face, the world before him blurred and splotched with bursts of darkness.

“Prompto, breathe," Gladio growls, his own breath hitching in his throat. "Astrals damn it, don’t do this right after he brought the light back. _Don’t._ ”

Prompto shakes his head again, more frantically this time, but it isn’t as if he can stop himself on cue. His head hurts and his airways are so clogged he can understand their concern about his breathing but he can’t stop, not when the circle of arms around his shoulders feels so broken and incomplete without the last pair to join in.

Besides, Ignis and Gladio are crying too for all that they have been telling him to stop. Prompto’s shoulder is soaked through where Ignis‘s head rests and he had heard Gladio’s voice break on his last word. Prompto doesn’t think he will ever be able to stop crying. Nor will Ignis or Gladio. Between the three of them, they will sink Insomnia under the weight of their grief. Anyone seeking to renter the city will have to swim or row in with those gondolas they had in Altissia and they will build a moat around the throne in tears.

Prompto wonders if there will be a body to guard, if the throne is empty or if Noct’s body is there, slumped against the red velvet as if in one of his deep sleeps. He doesn’t know which one would be worst. Perhaps both.

Eventually though, despite his earlier conviction, Prompto stops crying. He doesn’t want to but all the tears have been wrung out of him, leaving him to flop down like the worn rag he feels like before the Citadel. Insomnia has not been submerged like Altissia during Leviathan’s trial and Prompto stares out at its sunlit ruins. Even after the war and the daemons, even after Prompto’s fervent hatred for it the moment he learnt that this place was to be Noct’s grave, it is home and it is beautiful. This is what Noct had fought and given to save, a city of stone and marble and glass and memories and memories.

There was the place they hung out at while waiting for Noct to get off from work, which they had pointed out while fighting their way through the daemons roaming the city streets. And there was Ignis’s favourite cafe, where he sat watch while the other three ran down to the arcade across the road and Prompto trounced Noct at every shooting game and they both crashed and burned at the racing games and Gladio stood guard and trash-talked the both of them every step of the way.

This was what Noct had given his life for. _They_ were what Noct had given his life for, and Prompto gets it and he loves Noct for it, always has and always will, but sitting out here at the base of the Citadel’s steps with the incomplete circle of Ignis’s and Gladio’s arms around him and Insomnia battered and beautiful and untouched by their tears—

He just wishes it didn’t have to be this way.

**Author's Note:**

> I finished FFXV half a month ago and I am still **_not_** alright.
> 
> Find me here: [tumblr](http://kythen.tumblr.com) / [twitter](http://twitter.com/catcrowcalls)


End file.
